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LINCOLN 




Address Delivered at Quincy, Illinois, Tues- 
day, October 13, 1908, before the State 
Historical Society of Illinois, and the Lin- 
coin-Douglas 5emi-Centennial Society. 



BY GLORGL E,. ADAMS. 
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LINCOLN. 



We are gathered here today midway in a presidential cam- 
paign. We come together, Democrats and Republicans, to 
stand for a while on common ground. We come here to honor 
the memory of two great sons of Illinois, one a Democrat and 
the other a Republican, who, 50 years ago, met here in the most 
momentous political debate of modern times. That debate was 
momentous because the presidential campaign which followed 
it was merely the repetition on a thousand platforms of the 
arguments advanced by Lincoln and Douglas here, and that 
presidential campaign was the last trial at the bar of public 
opinion, the last trial before the appeal to arms, of the question 
of free territories, a question, the right settlement of which was 
necessary to the development of the greatest republic the world 
has known, that republic whose present power and influence 
upon other nations has gone far beyond the brightest dreams 
of the most ardent American patriot of fifty years ago. 

In the history of this country there have been great political 
debates. Each has had a logical connection with the others. 
Each has tended directly or indirectly to bring about a more 
perfect union of the American people. 

When the thirteen colonies declared their independence of 
Great Britain, they were independent of each other. They 
were jealous of each other. They were jealous of any common 
control. To defend themselves against a common enemy they 
formed a loose confederation. It worked badly during the war, 
and worse after the war. Then the wise men of all the states 
came together and made the Constitution, substantially as we 
have it to-day. That Constitution has won the admiration of 
statesmen all over the world, yet' it .was not easy to induce the 
several states to adopt it. So came the first great political debate 
to which I have referred. Hamilton, Madison and Jay, in the 
Federalist, urged the adoption of the Constitution. Other pub- 
lic men of eminence and ability urged its rejection. It was 
adopted, and thus the first step was taken toward a perfect 
union of the American people. 

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3 

More than a generation passed. The question of the 
meaning of ihe Constitution still remained. Calhoun of South 
Carohna insisted that the union under the Constitution was 
after all only a confederation of sovereign stites, each si ate 
having the right to nullify the acts of the general government 
and peaceably to withdraw from the union. So came the second 
great political debate, culminating in Webster's reply to Hayne 
in the United States Senate. That questio-i was settled not by 
the eloquence of Webster but by the stalwart patriotism of 
President Andrew Jackson, who declared that nullification was 
treason, and that he would hang traitors as high as Haman. 
Thus was taken the second step toward a perfect union of the 
American people. 

Another generation passed. The slavery question, settled 
for a time by compromise, became an open question once more. 
The slave states and the free states strove in eager rivalry to 
control the general government through the control of new 
states to be formed out of western territories. The question of 
slavery in the territories became the question of the day. It 
was a Constitutional question. Did the fathers of the republic 
mean that slavery should be confined to the states where it 
already existed.? Did they mean that the territories should be 
saved for free labor by the exclusion of slavery ? So came the 
third great political debate, in memory of which we come 
together today. 

That that debate did not immediately lead to a more per- 
fect union of the American people was not the fault of Abraham 
Lincoln. His expectation was that slavery would come to be 
recognized, not as a national institution but as a state institu- 
tion. It would not be allowed to spread into the territories, but 
would be protected in the states where it existed. He thought 
that thus the bitterness of the slavery question would disappear, 
and that in the course of time, perhaps, as he said in one of his 
speeches, in the course of a hundred years slavery would disap- 
pear in the South as it had already disappeared in the North. 

It was not an unreasonable hope, but we were not to be 
freed from slavery and the slavery question on such easy terms. 
Thousands of millions of dollars, and an inestimable treasure 



in the life blood of the flower of a generation of Americans, 
South and North, made up the penalty which we had to pay 
for the sin of those who introduced slavery into this country. 

Now another generation has passed away. The bitterness 
of the Civil war has gone. By the elimination of slavery there 
has come to exist a more perfect union of the American people 
than ever existed before, a more perfect national union than 
any great nation in the world has ever shown, except perhaps 
Japan. 

It is one of the notable facts in the history of the nineteenth 
century that this American nation, which European observers 
declared incapable of real national feeling, partly because of 
the difiference between North and South and partly because it 
is largely made up by heterogeneous immigration from all the 
countries of northern Europe, is in reality more homogeneous 
in thought, feeling and manner than any nation of Europe. It 
is also more homogeneous in language. It may be that a highly 
educated Englishman talks English better than a highly edu- 
cated American, but it is certain that the people of the United 
States, taken as a whole, speak their language with more uni- 
form accuracy than the people of the British Islands, or the 
people of France, Germany or Italy. 

Our homogeneous character, which makes the opinion of 
the people of the United States the greatest political power in 
the world, is due partly to our railways and our newspapers. 
It is due to our habit of travelling and our habit of discussing 
the same public questions from one end of the country to the 
other. It is due to our institutions. It is due to the union of 
the American people and therefore, so far as it is due to any 
one man, it is due to Abraham Lincoln. 

How can we hope to do justice to a character and career 
so great as his in a mere occasional address. His name has 
come to be one of the great names of history. To the oppressed 
of all nations he is the friend of humanity, the great emanci- 
pator. To statesmen of all countries he is the wise executive, 
who with a hand as strong as it was gentle guided his country 
in an hour of supreme peri) ; while to literary men and lovers 



of literature in English speaking countries, he is one of the 
great masters of the greatest languge in the world. 

Let us not try today to analyze his character or his political 
genius. Let us try rather to recall some of the circumstances 
which enabled this self taught American, born in dire poverty, 
reared in rude surroundings, at the age of forty-five years an 
Illinois lawyer little known outside of the state, to rise in the 
next ten years to a height of fame not achieved by human 
endeavor once in a century. 

Let us recall the situation and character fifty years ago of 
the State of Illinois, the arena of the great debate. They had 
much to do with Lincoln's career. The country of the Illinois, 
as it used to be called, seems to have been marked out by nature 
to serve as a bond of union between the North and the South. 
It was so even in geological times. Geologists tell us that in 
the remote past the head of the Gulf of Mexico was here. They 
tell us that the mighty river of the North, which now sends its 
comparatively scanty stream over Niagara and finds its way 
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, here poured its icy waters into a 
tropic sea. Traces of this ancient union of North and South 
are still to be found among the wild flowers of Illinois. Bota- 
nists tell us that around the head of Lake Michigan in north- 
eastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana plants allied to arctic 
species and plants allied to tropical or subtropical species are 
found in a variety and close proximity hardly to be seen else- 
where in the world. 

So it was in historical times. When the French settled 
Canada in the North and Louisiana in the South, here was the 
pathway between them. The projected deepwater channel 
from Lake Michigan to the Gulf, soon, I trust, to be realized, 
will be the fulfillment of a prophecy made hundreds of years 
ago. And so when Illinois was admitted to the Union, its 
boundaries were established with the deliberate purpose of 
making the new state a bond of political union between the 
North and the South. In the ordinance of 1787 for the gov- 
ernment of the Northwest Territory it was provided that in 
the western division of the territory Congress might lay out one 
or more states in that portion thereof lying north of an east and 



6 

west line drawn through the extreme southerly bend of Lake 
Michigan. The bill for the admission of Illinois, as reported 
by the Committee on Territories, adopted this east and west 
line as the northern boundary of the state. In that form the 
bill was placed on the calendar of the Committee of the whole. 
If it had become law without amendment the career of Abraham 
Lincoln would have been impossible. When the bill was 
reached on the calendar, Judge Pope, our territorial delegate, 
proposed an amendment. He proposed to fix the northern 
boundary of the state about fifty marine miles farther north. 
He gave his reasons. Illinois, he said, is connected wiih the 
South by the navigation of the Ohio and the Mississippi. It 
has been settled mainly from the South. If the northern boun- 
dary is fixed where the Committee proposes the new state will 
be essentially a southern state. If discord arises between 
North and South and disunion is threatened Illinois will go 
with the South and the Union will be dissolved. But if we give 
Illinois a part of the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, with 
a convenient port on that lake, she will be attached to the North 
and the east by the navigation of the Great Lakes, as well as 
attached to the South by the Ohio and the Mississippi. Then 
Illinois will be not a Northern state or a Southern state, but 
both in one, and might at some future time be- the keystone to 
the perpetuity of the Union. The amendment was adopted 
and the bill passed. Illinois was thus, at her very birth, 
pledged to maintain the Union. How well she has redeemed 
that pledge, and at what cost, the nation knows. 
"Abraham L/incoln's name appears, 
Grant and Logan and our tears, 
Illinois." 

Into the new state poured two streams of immigration, 
one from the North, the other from the South. Northern Illi- 
nois was largely settled from New England and New York. 
Southern Illinois, though its first American settler was a Massa- 
chusetts man, was mainly settled from Kentucky, North Caro- 
lina, Virginia and Maryland. By i860 it had become the fourth 
state of the Union, northern and southern at the same time, 
and the North connected with the South by the Illinois and 



Michigan canal and the Illinois Central railroad. It could 
fairly claim to be the representative state of the whole nation. 
We are the representative state today. Situated near the geo- 
graphical centre and the centre of population, and of railway 
transportation, great in agriculture, commerce and manufactures, 
we represent more than any other state the industrial life of 
this country. It is not without reason that the author of a 
recent magazine article calls Illinois " the heart of ihe United 
States." 

Fifty years ago our industries were as yet undeveloped, but 
in political sentiment it could even then be called the repre- 
sentative of the whole American people. Every phase of feeling 
and opinion on the slavery question the great question of the 
day, was to be found in Illinois. In no other state could the 
great debate on free territories be more fitly made than here, in 
order to be presented two years later to the people of the 
United States. 

As there was no state in which this great debate could 
have been more fitly held, so there was no man in Illinois bet- 
ter prepared to be the champion of free territories than Abraham 
Lincoln. Just how he became fitted for this great work we do 
not know. Some of his biographers declare that his career was 
an enigma. They mean that they can not see in his life, up to 
1854, any adequate explanation of the life he lived afterwards. 
Certain it is that when stirred by the reopening of the slavery 
question his daily life became a daily education for a great 
career, and the Lincoln-Douglas debate of 1858 was a prepara- 
tion for the presidency. It is a noteworthy fact that this intel- 
lectual struggle between two patriotic citizens of Illinois was the 
training of one of them for a contest with the enemies of his 
country. The same difficulties which Lincoln had to face in 
this debate with Douglas was analogous at least to the difficul- 
ties which beset him in the White House, while the qualities of 
mind and heart which sustained him here sustained him through 
the four dreadful years of his presidential term. 

Here he had confronting him the eloquence of Douglas, 
the ablest political debator of his time, the most distinguished 
Democrat, the most popular man in the L^nited States, his mind 



trained by long experience in public life to every rhetorical art 
of attack or defense, his style trenchant, his voice musical and 
sonorous as an organ tone, his bearing imperial, his manner 
fascinating to all who came within its influence. There in the 
White House he had confronting him the military genius of 
Lee and Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, and the devoted 
valor of the men who followed them. 

Here he had around him the people of Illinois, opposed 
by a large majority to the spread of slavery, but doubtful how 
to arrest it, and hampered by old political associations, free 
soil Democrats, free soil Whigs, Henry Clay compromise Whigs, 
Abolitionists, each faction jealous of every other. There he 
had around him the plain people of the United States, resolved 
to maintain the Union, horrified by the thought of Civil war, 
attached to the Constitution, anxious tor the Constitution if the 
Union were to be maintained by force. New England radical, 
the city of New York fearful for its commercial interests, and 
the border states watching every word and act of the adminis- 
tration to see whether an abolition war would drive them to 
follow the seceding states. 

Here in Illinois he had behind him the illboding whispers of 
discouraging friends, some saying that he went too far and too 
fast, others that he was ruining the cause by not going far enough, 
and the leading Republican editor of the United States openly 
espousing the cause of his antagonist. There in the White 
House he had behind him and around him like a swarm of gad- 
fles the crowd of place hunters, each anxious to save the Union 
by accepting an office, and the pestiferous throng of senators, 
congressmen, editors, ministers of the gospel, and reformers of 
all sorts, each anxious to show this backwoods Illinois president 
how to run the government of the United States and carry on 
a great Civil war. 

Through all those weary years he was sustained by the 
same qualities of mind and heart which had made themselves 
felt here in Illinois. His political sagacity, his foresight of the 
trend of opinions and events, and above all the sure feeUng in 
this man of the people of what was passing in the minds of the 
people of the United States were so marvellous that many 



9 

explained them by the direct inspiration of the Almighty. 
Courage he showed higher and more serene than the courage 
of Washington, tested by trials which Washington never knew. 
He was always ready to take the responsibility of his words 
and acts, always ready to bear on his own shoulders the blame 
of failure, always ready to share with others the honor of suc- 
cess. He directed the course of the great debate in Illinois 
against the remonstrances of his party friends older in public 
life than he. 

Arrived in Washington he was visited by members of the 
socalled Peace Commission, urging compromise with secession. 
They expected to find an ignorant and timid man, borne down 
with a sense of awful responsibility. They were astonished 
and dismayed to hear him declare with quiet self possession, 
" My course is as plain as a turnpike road. It is pointed out 
by the Constitution. I have no doubt which way I must go." 

When his accomplished Secretary of State, once a governor 
of New York and twelve years a Senator of the United States, 
laid out for Lincoln the policy which should be followed by the 
new administration, he was reminded at once, and never forgot, 
that the man who had been elected president was to be the real 
president for the next four years. 

When editors and clergymen of his own party urged imme- 
diate emancipation of the slaves early in the war, he refused, 
because the time was not yet come, and when the time did 
come and he laid his proclamation before the members of his 
cabinet he told them not to discuss the policy of the act, but 
only the time and manner of publication. From first to last he 
was the real head of his cabinet, the soul of his own adminis- 
tration. 

He was a master of men, but that which makes his memory 
dear to the hearts of his countrymen was neither his intellect 
nor his courage, but the kindliness of his nature, which embraced 
even those who were arrayed in arms against the government. 
The world will not forget, says his biographer, that the greatest 
Civil war in history was conducted by the most humane of men, 
and when he fell none had more cause to deplore his death 



10 

than those against whom for four years he had employed all the 
military resources of the nation. 

Kindliness of nature and the sense of humor which so 
often goes with it are not usuiUy reckoned part of the equip- 
ment of a statesman. Lincoln's humor was perhaps his best 
known trait during his youth and early manhood. It flished 
out from time to time even during the dark days of the Civil 
war when the lines in his face were growing deeper from day 
to day and his soul was heavy with the thought of the boys 
in the hospitals and the widows and orphans, North and South, 
When a friend expostulated with him for some humorous sally, 
he replied, "I know you to be an earnest, true man, but if I 
could not find vent for my feelings in this way, I should die." 

Perhaps Lincoln's sense of humor had a higher significance 
for the American people than Lmcoln himself knew. An emi- 
nent man referring to another eminent man, once, spoke of his 
humorous wisdom. It is a happy phrase. There is wisdom in 
humor and the highest political wisdom is impossible without 
it. Humor, says a great essayist, implies sympathy with human 
nature. It implies the power of putting one's self in the other 
man's place. It implies the power of understanding the 
thoughts and feelings of all sorts and conditions of men. A 
sense of humor, therefore, helps the statesman by keeping him 
in touch with the people. In a government like ours, where 
the people do rule, whatever party is in power the statesman 
must keep in touch with the people or he must fail, however 
brilliant or learned he may be. Lincoln was always in touch 
with the people, though he was often at odds with those who 
supposed that they were the leaders of the people. 

When Lincoln, at Gettysburg, gave to the world that 
address which the world will not let die, he reminded us that 
we cannot fitly consecrate the ground where brave men have 
fallen unless at the same time we dedicate ourselves to the 
cause for which they have given their lives ; and we, gathered 
here in memory of the great debate of fifty years ago, ought to 
devote ourselves, as far as we may, to the promotion of the 
perfect union of the American people which was near to the 
hearts of Lincoln and of Douiilas both. 



11 

Division between section and section we need not feir. 
Maine and California, Minnesota and Texas are today cordial 
nienfibers of a real sisterhood of states. There is not a county 
in South Carolina in which disunion would not be laughed to 
scorn. Need we fear a division of the nati >n on other lines 
than sectional ? Need we fear that division between class and 
class which was predicted by the political philosophers of 
Europe as the inevitable doom of the republic ? When Guizot, 
the French historian, heard of the outbreak of our Civil war he 
wrote to a friend that our republic had come to its natural and 
predestined end. Our institutions were to blame. We had 
existed thus far by the influence of the virtues of the first gene- 
ration of American statesmen. Macaulay, the English historian, 
declared that the American people would be strong and free so 
long as they continued to be poor. When wealih came, there 
would come the division into rich and poor. Then would come 
the demagogue, setting the poor against the rich, the farmer 
against the merchant, the artizan against the banker. So 
would come industrial confusion and out of the confusion 
would come the man on horseback, the dictator, and our repub- 
lic would merge in an empire, as had the republic of ancient 
Rome. 

Now we have become the richest nation in the world. We 
are richer than any other great nation ever was, but we are not 
divided, and there is no sign that we shall ever be divided into 
a class of the rich and a class of the hopeless poor as Macaulay 
predicted. Millionaires we have in plenty. Nearly every one 
of them is the son of a poor man. Nearly every one of them 
has reason to believe that his grandson will lead a life of the 
same strenuous endeavor which to him has made life worth liv- 
ing. Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves is an 
old American saying. The wealth of the wealthy is a pittance 
compared with the aggregate wealth of the poor. Labor and 
capital are on better terms with each other here than in other 
countries. Their dependence on each other is more apparent 
here than elsewhere. The wealth of our rich men is mainly 
invested in industrial enterprises in the United States. These 
industries while they seek a foreign market for their surplus 



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12 

product, are mainly engaged in supplying the demands of the 
American people, and the American people are in the aggregate 
the largest consumer and the most profitable customer in the 
world. American labor knows that the confidence of American 
capital is a better guaranty of work and wages than an Act of 
Congress or a political platform, while American capital with- 
out pretense of philanthropy watches the rising and falling 
prosperity of labor as a barometer by which to gauge the rising 
and falling of its own income. In another sense than that in 
which Saint Paul spoke we are reminded even by the market 
reports that we are members one of another and many mem- 
bers in one body. To what do we owe this condition of things 
which makes our government the most stable government in the 
world ? We owe it partly to our institutions. We owe it mainly 
to our vast domain, the spacious home of American capital and 
American labor, covering nearly sixty degrees of longitude and 
twenty-five degrees of latitude, with a great variety of soil and 
climate, but with the same institutions, the same habit of life, 
the same language and a scale of living the highest in the world. 
We owe it to the unity of the Republic. We owe it largely to 
the policy, character and influence of Abraham Lincoln. 

He is the greatest of our great men. He is the representa- 
tive American. His place in the affections of the generations 
to come will be a larger place than mere eloquence or literary 
genius can win. His fame will be higher than mere military 
glory. 

" Great Captains with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for an hour, 
But at last silence comes, 

Then all these pass ; and standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 
That kindly, earnest, brave, fore-seeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 



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